ENGINEERS SAY NEW TECHNOLOGY TO BRING BETTER ROADS, SAVINGS

County engineers are ecstatic over the use of a new technology they say has brought Palm Beach County to the cutting edge of road resurfacing.

In more concrete terms, this means the county's existing roads ought to be stopped from deteriorating sooner and kept in acceptable condition longer.

Ultimately, tax money should be saved because repairs will be done before roads have fallen apart to the point where major overhauls are needed.

"We're excited about it," said Jim Snelgrove, director of the road and bridge division of the county Engineering Department.

"It's an extremely efficient use of taxpayer dollars for resurfacing. The most effective use I'm aware of," Deputy County Engineer George Webb said.

The technology, supplied under contract by a firm from Arlington Heights, Ill., allows the county to plan road repair more accurately as well as set projects further into the future, Snelgrove said.

This year, for the first time, the county has adopted a five-year asphalt resurfacing program. The cost is budgeted at $10.8 million.

Roads expected to need repair between now and Sept. 30, 1994, have been identified. The cost of the repairs of each road has also been determined.

The improvement in planning results from computer and laser technology used by Infrastructure Management Services to analyze the condition of the roads, Snelgrove said.

Before IMS was hired in 1988, road and bridge employees had to eyeball the roads and rely on their judgment to decide which roads needed repair, when they needed repair and what kind of repair they needed.

"This program takes the guesswork out of it," Snelgrove said. He added, though, that the IMS report shows that road and bridge employees had done a good job in their recommendations based on visual observation.

According to Donald Hardt, IMS director of business development, the company uses a van equipped with a laser road surface tester, another machine that tests the underlying condition of the road and an on-board computer.

IMS has been using this combination of technology, developed by the Swedish government, since 1984, Hardt said.

The van can do its work while traveling up to 55 mph.

"It can flow with traffic rather than requiring lane closures," Hardt said.

The equipment provides readings on cracks and ruts and relative strengths of the roads. The computer merges them, adds in factors about weather, drainage, traffic loads and other relevant information and provides data that can be used to develop a repair and maintenance strategy.

"It spits out exactly what are the worst conditions and best conditions," Snelgrove said. For each stretch of pavement, the data tells how much depth of asphalt is needed to bring the road up to a certain quality level.

IMS, which was paid about $68,000, tested all major county-maintained roads and many secondary roads between the coast and U.S. 441 -- close to 500 miles of road in all, Hardt said.

The computer analyzed the roads in 1,000-foot sections of pavement, so if only one stretch of a road was in bad condition, that part would be distinguished in the data.

Roads west of U.S. 441 have a separate paving program. Many are built on muck, which must be resurfaced every five or six years, Webb said.

He said roads east of U.S. 441 need resurfacing every 10 to 15 years.

Under the old system of visually observing a road, good and bad decisions necessarily were traced to the quality of the observer's recommendations.

The new system, Webb said, limits the human factor drastically.

"It's like a just-the-facts-ma'am approach," Webb said. Objectivity replaces the possibility of politics or personal favoritism entering into decisions about what roads to pave when, Webb said.

So far, at least eight projects in the 1988-89 fiscal year have been completed at a cost of nearly $800,000.

Resurfacing costs are budgeted at $2.1 million this year and next year, and $2.2 million for each of the next three years.

ROAD WORK

Sections of road included in Palm Beach County's asphalt resurfacing program for the fiscal year running from Oct. 1, 1988, through Sept. 30, 1989:

COMPLETED ROADS

COST

Central Industrial Park 160,394

Dillman Heights subdivision 48,422

Gramercy Park subdivision 63,488

Indiantown Road -- Pratt Whitney Road east one mile 90,000

with 4-inch paved shoulders

Lyons Road -- Glades Road south to end 250,000

Northern Pines subdivision 63,550

Pratt Whitney Road -- Indiantown Road north one mile 90,000

with 4-inch paved shoulders

Sunny Acres subdivision 27,683

PROJECTS TO BE COMPLETED

COST

Barwick Road -- Coconut Lane to West Atlantic Avenue 49,905

Boca Del Mar -- Palmetto Park Road to Powerline Road 16,510

Brandon Drive -- Barwick Road to East End 16,355

Country Club Drive (Sandalfoot Cove subdivision) 250,000

Country Club Road -- Belvedere Road to Cherry Road 11,556

County Road A1A -- U.S. 1 to U.S. 1 120,618

Ellison Wilson Road -- Donald Ross Road to McLaren Road 160,147

Elmhurst Road -- Military Trail to west end 20,263

Gulfstream Road -- Lake Worth Road to Canal Road 23,647

Keystone Drive -- Palmetto Park Road to south end 26,865

Lakewood Road -- Military Trail to Davis Road 70,951

Lillian Road -- Congress Avenue to Palm Springs 9,387

Limestone Creek Road -- south end to north end 14,634

NW 22nd Street -- Lawrence Road to Congress Avenue 37,072

Okeechobee Boulevard -- Crestwood Boulevard to Folsom Road 85,586

Old Dixie Highway -- Park Street to Toney Penna Drive 40,899

Prosperity Farms Road -- PGA Boulevard to south of Crystal Point 55,608